JeepersTseepers

JeepersTseepers

93p

40 comments posted · 14 followers · following 1

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +19 points

One bit of description I liked in this chapter was "shocked pajamas and torn faces." (I think that was it; I don't have my book with me.) I love how Zusak switched around the adjectives from the more standard noun they'd go with. I never really noticed it until this re-read.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +14 points

I am proctoring a Very Important Exam to a room of Masters students right now, and I'm fighting back tears.

I think that Hans part is what set me off sobbing too, the first time I read this. Now, I sob at various points throughout the book. It gets sadder and sadder each time I read it, because at this point, the characters have been living in my head for years, so I know and love them all even more.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +7 points

I agree. I think the rest has to be read together, or it could be a very bad thing. I'm not going to elaborate on that for fear of saying anything spoilery.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +2 points

Well, phooey. I screwed up my closing italics tag.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 2 replies · +17 points

And it also means that The Book Thief goes unfinished. Death picks up a book that isn’t done.

Death says she finished her book, and he even gives us the last line of it. When the bombs come, she was in middle of reading through it, from beginning to end. So I suppose you can say it's unfinished, considering that she may have wanted to do some editing.

Speaking of that last line... "I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."
I'm pretty sure Zusak used those words in regards to himself and The Book Thief either in an interview I read or at one of the talks/Q&As I saw him at. It's such a great line, and it's related to another line from this chapter that I love:

"...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was wring."

I feel like that line, more than any other in the book, is Zusak revealing himself, sharing his perspective, giving a little wave, and then ducking back down behind Death.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 4 replies · +23 points

So many things to say about these chapters. The last few chapters of this book are so beautiful and perfect. I can see how spreading them out over a few days could be completetly draining and depressing; I really think you need to go back and read them all at once when you're done.

"Shall we use the door or the window?"

ILU ILSA.

"The summer dress was yellow with red trim."

Now we can take a look back to the beginning of the book, where we are told...
"All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon."

A soft, yellow-dressed afternoon. I love it.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +12 points

I confess: I laughed when I got your text. I still can't comprehend how you completely forgot about EVERYBODY DYING.

Liesel and Max's reunion during the march through Molching is one of my favorite parts of the book. I see it so clearly, and it hurts so much. The way she hands "The Word Shaker" back to him is beautiful. This is one of the parts where you can see a little bubbling of the page where one of my tears fell.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +19 points

I have been literally afraid for you and your reaction.

Liesel wasn’t dead then, though, was she? She was running away and drops the book, right?

Right, she drops the book in her grief, and Death grabs it before it can be carted away with the rubble.

A piece of wall with a dripping sun painted on it.

It kills me when the rescue workers pass that piece of "rubble" up. The remnants of such beauty, reduced to...this.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +5 points

Yes, I love the visual of the snows of Stalingrad falling in the Holtzapfel kitchen. One of the most beautiful and sad visuals of the book.

12 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Book T... · 0 replies · +6 points

I SECOND THIS. Dead Like Me is one of the only TV series I own. And it's the only multi-season show that I own in completion. It's funny and twisted and touching all smooshed together in one brilliantly-casted package.